JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Navy bid a final farewell to the P-3C Orion aircraft, which took its final flight from NAS Jax Friday afternoon.
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The Orion has been in service in the United States Navy for more than 60 years, spanning generations of pilots, who used it as their instrument to carry out their mission and relied on it to get them home safely.
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The sendoff started with the roar of the plane’s four engines firing up one by one, followed by a quick taxi and then take off.
A final goodbye with a wing wave to the hundreds of Navy veterans and family members marked the end of the P-3C, as the last of its kind headed to the boneyard in Arizona.
Just before the sendoff, former pilots, crewmembers and support staff paid homage to the Orion.
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“This plane has united six decades of Naval aviators,” Senior Chief Petty Officer Armando Carrillo Jr. with VP-30 said.
The P-3 was formally introduced to the Naval fleet in 1962 in response to the Soviet Union’s growing armada of submarines.
The plane has seen action in every major American conflict since the Vietnam War.
It’s one of just five aircraft that can boast more than half a century of service to the United States military.
“This is the instrument that we’ve used to propagate freedom,” Captain Derrick Eastman, Commanding Officer of the VP-30 squadron, said.
VP-30 has trained servicemembers on the P-3 since the 60′s.
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“And it is a special feeling to know that they’re going out there to do the same exact things that I was taught to do over 20 years ago,” Eastman said.
Captain Eastman said it’s sad to say goodbye to the Orion, but its mission lives on in a new generation of aircraft tasked with carrying out the same critical role long into the future.
“The legacy continues, you know, we’re literally taking that baton from one platform to another, and the mission is the same,” Eastman said.
At NAS Jax and throughout the country the P-3′s mission will, and in many cases already has been, replaced by the newer more technologically advanced P-8A Poseidon.
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But the decades of service the P-3 contributed to protecting the country will never be forgotten by the countless men and women who served on the aircraft.
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